The Riff

Party Ben's European Vacation Tour

Like I mentioned in this week's Top Ten, your grammatically-challenged guest blogger Party Ben is heading off on a European DJ tour tomorrow. It's pretty cool, since, honestly, I'm not really that popular of a DJ, but somehow I managed to cobble together appearances in Poland, Germany, Belgium and France over the course of about three weeks. Because of the tight schedule (and probable unreliability of internet connections at the, ahem, budget accommodations I'll be patronizing) it's unclear how often I'll be able to keep up with my Riff duties, but I'll do my best to post updates now and then on What Life is Like on the Road for a Basically Unknown DJ Guy, or Random Cultural Trends Sweeping the European Continent with Enough Significance to be Obvious Even to a Drunk Tourist. Hopefully the MoJo Arts & Culture Team (I'm capitalizing a lot here, aren't I?) can cover my beat—i.e., anything that happens in the world of Arcade Fire and M.I.A.—while I'm gone, and I'll be back in December.

If for some reason you're more curious about specific locations and venues you can look at the schedule on my website here. Now I'm off to enjoy the favorable exchange rates and general love for Americans that's shared all over the—what? What are you saying? Not so much? Ah.

Mothers for Vapid Kid Culture

It's easy to laugh at High School Musical, and kid culture in general. Metrosexual Zach Efron as MoonDoggie. Vanessa Hudgens as...er.. Vanessa Williams. It couldn't be more bland and divorced from reality. I'd worry about my kids if they weren't mesmerized by it.

Only 6 and 4, when High School Musical queues up, and it does so often, the yelling stops, the toys drop. Tiny eyes fuse on the set. They go ballistic dancing to the high octane numbers while my princess-obsessed four year old squeezes her lids shut and twirls about, all alone and deliciously sad, on 'Gabriella's' heartbreak songs. They go to the same magical place all of us yearned for as children. While aimed at teenagers and tweens, I'm guessing that mine aren't the only tots moved by the extremely silly High School Musical and it's burgeoning spin offs the same way I was mesmerized by the pop music, 40's blockbusters and movie extravaganzas of my childhood. If I'm lucky, dumb old HSM will stay with them all their lives.

When I was a kid, back when there was one remoteless TV in the house, one stereo and perhaps two radios, I was baffled by the grown-ups switching off the old musicals, swirling Temptations and Supremes we were inhaling in favor of news, sports or talk radio. How dumb was that? Vividly, I remember wanting to throttle the aunt who cruelly parodied the overwrought choreography of the 5 Stairsteps as she dramatically changed the channel. It physically hurt to know that, just behind Walter Cronkite or one notch over from baseball, Michael Jackson was crooning his heart out. Thank god I didn't know then how broken that heart already was by the time we were both ten years old. Hence, the point of HSM and why we grown ups should perhaps think twice before dismissing it. Why we should, in fact, abet its popularity and refrain from cataloguing the countours of its vapidity.

While my parents often bogarted variety shows they were uninterested in, they made a point, in those pre-vcr days to make specialn TV watching room for the annual showings of Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz and the like, those magical places of beautifully safe danger we could foolishly wander into knowing full well we'd be rescued each time. And to soaring music, beautiful clothes and exuberant choreography no less. I'm not the first parent to be seduced by HSM and its effect on both themselves and their besotted children. But the sweet significance of HSM didn't really sink in until I was sitting in the bleachers at my son's track meet this summer.

Lost in a crowd of teenagers waiting their team's turn running, HSM never came up directly in the conversations as they squirted each other with their water bottles and cell phoned friends sitting four tiers away. But every few minutes, one girl or the other, and it was always a girl, would abstractedly start singing a few bars from the HSM score. The boys would fall silent as nearly every girl joined in. No one seemed to care how her voice sounded (believe me, they weren't singing to show off. not those voices), and they didn't try to project and draw attention to themselves. They just went to East High, if only for a minute. The place where all the cliques learn to get along and put on a show! The place where ordinary teenagers become extraordinary. Each time, the song would simply fade away, unfinished for no reason I could discern. More distracted texting, then back to the tedium of coaches yelling and moms like me trying to stop their toddlers from tripping over them yet again.

I'm happily surprised to learn that more than a thousand high schools nationwide have staged productions of HSM; no doubt, in a fear years newly minted Broadway stars will be citing the phenomenon as the catalyst for their own interest in performing. As for me and mine, we're doing the unthinkable. I'll be camping out at a local high school tomorrow morning, hoping to score sold-out tickets for our home grown version of HSM. Hannah Montana's got nothing on Sharpay and Chad. I'm so afraid I won't be able to, I haven't told the kids yet. I have to admit, I'm actually looking forward to it. It's a sing-along version and my heart will be slightly broken if mine don't fling themselves headlong toward the stage to join in the magic.

Friday Says Bye-Bye Music News Day

And now, the Riff's crack Music News department follows up on stories we brought you here first. ...Well, maybe not "first," but, uh, in the past at some point, at least?

Okay, sorry, Prince. The Minneapolis superstar says he's not suing fans (as we mocked here on the Riff the other day), but in fact just the opposite: his promoter released a statement saying that Prince wants to "provide Prince fans with exclusive music and images entirely free of charge, and bypassing unofficial and unauthorized phony fan sites that exploit both consumers and artists. The action taken earlier this week was not to shut down fansites, or control comment in any way." So this turns into another one of those "he-said, Prince-said" things.

My Bloody Valentine: is really, truly going to release something new before the end of 2007, says bandleader Kevin Shields. The album will likely consist of "this 96-97 half-finished record, and then a compilation of stuff we did before that, and a little bit of new stuff." Whatever, anything, who cares, just give it to us!!!

Radiohead are denying stuff too: they're contradicting the recent reports suggesting 60 percent of fans who downloaded In Rainbows paid nothing, calling the data "wholly inaccurate," and saying it "in no way reflected definitive market intelligence or, indeed, the true success of the project." Hmm, sounds like one of those denials-of-everything-but-the-facts. Anyway, you'll be able to buy the physical version of In Rainbows on December 31st, and hopefully somebody will count those.

And finally, following up on the continuing Amy Winehouse saga: police raided the singer's home and then arrested her husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, in East London on Thursday, while a tearful Winehouse was present. Fielder-Civil was allegedly involved in an attempt to fix his own trial in an assault case of a bartender earlier this summer. The victim was apparently offered $400,000 to keep quiet. Mr. Winehouse sounds awesome, can I just say that? Anyway, Winehouse's wobbly, slurring performance at the MTV Europe awards last week raised some eyebrows as well, and oh, it's Friday, why not watch that here:

John Coltrane, 101

I love jazz biographies as much as the next music nerd, but Ben Ratliff's latest book on jazz giant John Coltrane, Coltrane: The Story of a Sound, transcends typical expectations of a biography. It documents how one of the most famous and revered jazz musicians of all time actually developed his sound, style, and technique.

Coltrane, in the hands of this New York Times music critic, is a man constantly searching—and practicing—and pushing himself to the next level musically. He's also a music theory-obsessed saxophonist that people didn't always know what to make of, but he was consistently invited to play anyway; and repeatedly blew people away with his power and tenacity.

The first-person accounts given by fellow musicians, friends, peers and admirers are the charm of the book. French-horn player David Amram recalls Coltrane sitting outside of a club, eating a piece of pie and talking about Einstein's theory of relativity. Testimonies from rock musicians help contextualize Coltrane's influence outside of New York's jazz clubs. The Stooges' singer Iggy Pop, known for his wild physicality on stage, explains "What I heard John Coltrane do with his horn, I tried to do physically." Mike Watt, bassist for the post-punk band The Minutemen, says "[Coltrane] didn't want to get fuckin' nailed down. That's the anarchistic spirit."

In short, it takes Ratcliff 200 pages to describe how an amazing, controversial jazz man worked to transform himself and the instrument he played, and as a result, challenged what people thought (and still think) jazz music should sound like.

Carrie Brownstein : NPR :: Party Ben : The Mother Jones?

Or maybe it's the other way around. National Public Radio has recently taken your tax dollars and contributions and thrown them at another kooky artist: Carrie Brownstein, guitarist and vocalist for the toweringly-awesome on-hiatus Portland trio Sleater-Kinney. The "Monitor Mix" is NPR's second music blog after "All Songs Considered," and Brownstein gets it all to herself, and even gets a picture of herself and her dog up at the top. Lucky! A first glance over there shows she's into Curb Your Enthusiasm, the Ramones, and bands with "cat" in their name. Me too!

Hey wait a minute, why am I talking about competing liberal media blogs with superstar (ahem!!) guest writers? Don't go over there, stay here on the Riff! Besides, Brownstein hasn't figured out how to post pictures yet, and we have way more of those, and even videos. Speaking of, Sleater-Kinney, how awesome? For a few years right around 1996-99, they were absolutely the best band in America. Throwing a dart at the board of my 1000 favorite S-K songs (or, more accurately, doing a quick video search) brings us:

Sleater-Kinney – "Get Up" (from The Hot Rock, 1999)

Marxism in the Eye of the Conservative Beholder

At least, in the eyes of those who find out that being an apologist and fellow traveler to rapacious capitalism still won't provide you access to that which is being conserved. Doing 'the club's' dirty work just isn't the same as being invited to join 'the club'. Even worse is realizing that you've only be invited in to clean it. Wonder how long it took these worshippers of the fat-cat capitalist class to convince themselves that this isn't utter hypocrisy?:

Five authors have sued the parent company of Regnery Publishing, a Washington imprint of conservative books, charging that the company deprives its writers of royalties by selling their books at a steep discount to book clubs and other organizations owned by the same parent company.

In a suit filed in United States District Court in Washington yesterday, the authors Jerome R. Corsi, Bill Gertz, Lt. Col. Robert (Buzz) Patterson, Joel Mowbray and Richard Miniter state that Eagle Publishing, which owns Regnery, “orchestrates and participates in a fraudulent, deceptively concealed and self-dealing scheme to divert book sales away from retail outlets and to wholly owned subsidiary organizations within the Eagle conglomerate.”

Imagine these conservatives' horror to find out that a big, profitable business put more energy into deflating their authors' royalties than into publishing more odes to child labor and deforestation. But, then, these are the deep-thinkers who wrote bestsellers swift-boating Kerry and 'proving' that Bush is really winning the war on terror. My, how sudden, how selective, their distaste for fraud, deception and self-dealing. Sorta like the slaves who narc'd on runaways only to find themselves still put to the lash for minor infractions. No honor among thieves, guys. Certainly, there's no intellectual consistency, not when money's concerned. Here's my favorite part:

“It suddenly occurred to us that Regnery is making collectively jillions of dollars off of us and paying us a pittance.” He added: “Why is Regnery acting like a Marxist cartoon of a capitalist company?”

Here's another question: why do they think Regnery's (alleged) business practices are Marxist when it is in fact these authors' critique which is? Where you stand really does seem to depend on where you sit.

'Ghost Punk' Alive and Well in Brooklyn

My infatuation for the week? Brooklyn's noisy, three-piece band These Are Powers. Their 2007 Hoss Records debut, Terrific Seasons, is loud and creepy, and I mean that in a good way.

The band describes their sound as "ghost punk," I'm guessing because the music is intense, dark, and ominous, and influenced by (as they put it) spiritual mysticism, supernatural phenomena, and the prophecies of a UFO-obsessed cab driver. They also call their sound "future primitive" (whatever that means), which, combined with incomprehensible echo-heavy vocals, make this album sound like background music for a chase scene in a bizarre horror flick.

I can see how that might sound awful, but it's not. It's mesmerizing; and probably best seen live, if these video clips are any indication. Try to imagine a combination of early Sonic Youth mixed with some Bauhaus and a lot of sarcasm.

Now I Feel Dumb For Actually Paying For the Radiohead Album

And those British Pounds are like real money and stuff. As everybody who has internet access knows, Radiohead recently released their latest album In Rainbows as a digital download via their own website, allowing buyers to name their own price. While the band themselves still aren't talking about how many people downloaded the album (or how much they paid), a consumer research firm did a study and found that a large majority paid, well, zip:

Some 62 percent of the people who downloaded "In Rainbows" in a four- week period last month opted not to pay the British alt-rockers a cent. But the remaining 38 percent voluntarily paid an average of $6, according to the study by comScore Inc. …The results of the study were drawn from data gathered from a few hundred people who are part of comScore's database of 2 million computer users worldwide. The firm, which has permission to monitor the computer users' online behavior, did not provide a margin of error for the study's results.

Interestingly, the percentage of American fans who paid at all was slightly higher than the non-U.S. average (40% to 36%), and amusingly, the average amount paid by people who did pay was way higher in the U.S., $8.05 compared to $4.64 outside the U.S. I'm going to take a guess the exchange rate came into play there: I bet there were quite a few fans like myself whose casual entering of a number that seemed like a nice compromise—say, £5—were in for a bit of a shock when their credit card bill came back saying that turned out to be $10.43. Even those of us with impending European tours who are keeping their eye on the now-so-low-it's-barely-visible dollar ~~(€1.46 today!!)~~ (er, wait, I mean, €1 is $1.46 today. See this is part of the problem right here, Americans can't do math) succumbed to mathematical habit; I mean, paying somebody 3 of anything for an album just seems mean, even though £3 is like $6.25, which isn't bad for ten 160kbps mp3s from a band who doesn't need the money. Ah well, consider it my contribution towards the downfall of the record industry.

Technological TMI

Wanna know how many calories sex with the hubby, versus sex with the mailman, burns?

Over at Slate, Amanda Schaefer tried out a gadget that allowed her to incessantly track exactly how her body was responding to food and exercise. As if we weren't self-absorbed and techno-obsessed enough. Those of us with low self esteem and border line OCD might do best to steer clear:

This week, I discovered how many calories I burn climbing stairs, riding trains, sleeping, and having sex. The data come courtesy of a plastic device called the bodybugg, which is currently strapped to the underside of my right arm, like an oversized ladybug about to nuzzle the armpit. The bodybugg is designed to measure the number of calories burned minute by minute over the course of a day, in order to help people lose weight (or gain—it's apparently popular with bodybuilders).

Bodybugg is part of a new wave of personal monitoring gadgets that promise to track various aspects of our health, fitness, or risk of disease. Nike + iPod, for instance, uses sensors in sneakers to track a runner's time, distance, and calories burned. An experimental alarm clock works with a headband that monitors sleep stages, promising to wake you up in a lighter phase so you feel less groggy. A specialty shirt, currently in clinical trials in Europe, is packed with sensors that monitor heart rate and breathing. A toilet now on the market in Japan tests urine streams for glucose, gathering data that could be used to monitor diabetes. These gadgets threaten to serve up more data than we know what to do with, not to mention make us ever more self-absorbed. But they also dangle the hope of better understanding and better health. What's it like to spy on one's own body 24/7? I decided to find out.

If you'll read the entire piece (which I recommend. It fascinates with it's horrible portent), you'll see that Schaefer didn't miss the connection between the narcissism inherent in a supposedly health-related trend and that in the minute-by-minute blogging of life's minutae ("I just got off the A train and there's a smell...") so rife on the internet.

You know how I know this trend leads no where healthy? Cuz I want one. I want to buy it instead of a gym membership and use it to track my middle aged decline. I'd use it to beat myself up every five minutes all the way through a trencher of buffalo wings and a 4 hour Law and Order marathon. I'd say it was to motivate myself. Yup. That's what I'd say.

The nanny state gets a bad rap: this sort of technology simply should only be available to mental health professionals. It's potential to help in choosing between lovers is more than outweighed by the decline in the nation's will to live.

Livin' It Up in the Hotel Islamofascism?

The Eagles have always annoyed me ("Hotel California" ranking as the number one depressing song ever to be played at parties), but I can't let a right-wing critique of the boring 70s band go without a fight.

Warner Todd Huston this week dissed The Eagles' new album, Long Road Out of Eden, in his blog on the website NewsBusters: Exposing and Combating Liberal Media Bias for "attacking the integrity" of the United States and forgetting to mention the "Islamofascists trying to blow us all up" in their lyrics. Sure, it's important to be cognizant of terrorist activity, but what lyrics could possibly rhyme with the word "islamofascism?"

First of all, since when do we expect concise political commentary from The Eagles? Personally, the band's songs are more likely to conjure up yawns from me than activism. Second of all, why is Huston wasting almost 2,000 words on an essay dissing a laid-back, folk-rock-pop band that hasn't released a studio album in 28 years? Surely there are other bands, artists, and organizations out there with much more influence and a bigger following who are much more worthy of some conservative backlash.

Heroes Back on Track

It's been a rough couple weeks for the "little X-Men that could," as NBC's breakout hit from last season seemed to wilt under the pressure of being, well, NBC's only breakout hit from last season. The first episodes so far this season have been both confusing and kind of dull, with our heroes scattered around the world (and throughout time), one of them even affected with amnesia in, well, a place people are often affected with amnesia, actually: a bar in Ireland. I'd come close to giving up on the show, to be honest, but a scene two weeks ago hinted at intriguing directions to come: a new villain, Maury, the father of Matt the mind-reading policeman, emerged with the ability to trap you in a literal nightmare, oblivious to the outside world. The two nightmare scenes had a minimal beauty and elemental terror, hinting at how the show has often achieved surprising, unique moments.

Tuesday's on the Ones and Twos With Music News Day

A 43-year-old man of African-American descent has been charged with defacement of property at the Tupac Amaru Shakur arts center in Atlanta that included hanging a noose around the statue of Tupac. He has not been charged with a hate crime. The vandalism also included flyers bearing rants about other rappers, Hurricane Katrina and 9/11, so it turns out the guy is just, well, a little nuts. And not all nutty protesters can be as fun as our 12 Galaxies guy.

Roseanne Cash, the 52-year-old daughter of Johnny Cash, is set to undergo brain surgery for a "rare but benign condition" and is canceling the rest of her tour. Her label released a statement saying that the singer is expected to make a full recovery.

The White Stripes have apparently been busy, posting on their website that they've been working on a new video, three new songs that include a "special collaboration," and a new version of a track from Icky Thump. Well, yes, that's what bands do I guess, but they're the White Stripes.

Jimmy Page broke his pinky in a fall in his garden, it turns out. Rock 'n' roll!

Top Ten Stuff 'n' Things - Reviewing Metacritic's Best-Reviewed Albums of the Year

Well, Riffers, this will be my last Top Ten for a few weeks as I'm leaving for a European Tour this coming weekend; yes, that's right, Europeans will apparently part with their hard-earned euros (and zloty and koruny!) to watch me play CDs. Zut alors. So for this Top Ten, I figured I'd start the long, tortuous process of winnowing down a year-end "Best Albums" list by taking a look at the Metacritic Top Ten Best-Reviewed Albums of the Year.

Metacritic is a site that tallies up reviews from around the world of cultural criticism with a somewhat fallible mathematical formula, assigning points from 1 to 100 based on the grade given in the review. They've been adding up the points for the year so far, and their list is interesting both for its errors and its accuracy (for instance, hip-hop is noticeably absent from the top ten). Here's their list with my thoughts and where each album might end up on my personal year-end list.

10. Robert Wyatt – Comicopera
The 62-year-old former drummer for Soft Machine famously lost the use of his legs in an accident in 1973, and found his voice as a solo artist in the '90s. Comicopera is airy and jazzy, and Wyatt sounds delicate and emotional, almost like the reincarnation of Nick Drake. The album's themes revolve around protest; protest against war, against civilization in general. It's often quite beautiful and affecting, but also a bit scattered.

9. Battles – Mirrored
Prog rock is back, and it's got techno in it! The New York combo sound distinctly British here in their ability to combine rock intensity with electronic experimentalism, and the album was appropriately released on Warp Records, home to Aphex Twin. But despite all that, it's immensely listenable, with lead single "Battles" taking on a kind of Gary Glitter-style swagger and ending up in Diplo DJ sets mashed up with M.I.A.

8. Panda Bear – Person Pitch
Good vibrations indeed, this reverb-laden tribute to the major-chord psychedelic pop of Brian Wilson has something in common with the Magnetic Fields: it achieves its traditional-sounding warmth via decidedly non-traditional methods. This is basically the solo project of Animal Collective's Noah Lennox, yet the sound is full and rich with harmonies.

7. LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver
A triumphant and grief-stricken album of plain-spoken dance music, Silver so perfectly defines its own place that it's hard to imagine how we lived in its absence. Band leader James Murphy digs in the crates of classic disco, Talking Heads, and New Order, and created an album that holds together as such, despite the standout brilliance of many of its singles. The unlikely centerpiece, "Someone Great," has entered the pantheon of melancholy electro classics like "Don't You Want Me," with its mechanical blips coalescing into a majestic tribute to a lost friend.

6. Les Savy Fav - Let's Stay Friends
The indie-punk band has built a reputation as a blistering live act, and this album captures an intensity that's infectious. The Fav were doing angular guitar rock before Bloc Party knew how to walk, and Friends has moments of "this is how it's done" greatness. "What Would Wolves Do" is the highlight, a ticking, melancholy track with soaring guitar lines reminiscent of early U2, but they also wander a bit into muddy ballads.

iTunes For Magazines?

Time Inc. is at work on Maghound, which is akin to an online newstand where readers will pay a monthly fee—$4.95 for three magazines, $7.95 for five or seven for $9.95—and can then mix and match magazines of their choosing (the magazines they offer, that is, I don't see Mother Jones pop up on the cover crawl).

Brian Wolfe, president of Time Consumer Marketing, calls Maghound, set to officially launch next year, the answer to Amazon for books, Netflix for movies, and iTunes for music. "The magazine industry," he recently told AdAge (subscription), "has done nothing essentially to make the consumer experience better." The online service, though, only goes so far. No digital, paperless versions. But one user improvement that will surely attract subscribers, those renewal notices won't pile up. But no promises on what bait-to-switch will fill your Inbox.

Websites Blocked By the Denver International Airport Free Wireless Service

I returned from a quick trip to Nebraska today via DIA, and during my layover, logged onto their free wireless service. When I tried to check a few web sites, I got the following messages:

Boing Boing
"Your request to URL http://boingboing.net/ has been blocked by the URL Filter Database. The URL is listed under categories (Incidental Nudity, Blogs / Wiki), which are not allowed by your administrator at this time. The following reputation level was assigned to it: Neutral.

Towleroad
"Your request to URL "http://www.towleroad.com/" has been blocked by the URL Filter Database. The URL is listed under categories (Provocative Attire, Politics / Opinion), which are not allowed by your administrator at this time. The following reputation level was assigned to it: Neutral."

The Drudge Report, however, came up just fine. Just letting you know.

Prince Declares Images of Prince Off-Limits

Lawyers for Prince have ordered several of the superstar's biggest fan sites to remove any image that bears his likeness prompting fans to form a group to fight the demands. Three websites: housequake.com, princefams.com and prince.org have come together to form 'Prince Fans United' in response to the situation, which even sees demands to remove images of fans own tattoos. - NME

Bruce Springsteen has instructed his legal team to track down all web sites which feature his ass and have them eliminated, the Riff has learned. The New Jersey star's rear, clad in worn denim, bulged proudly on the cover of the 1984 album Born in the U.S.A., and lawyers believe any internet representation of the cheeks' signature curves could constitute an income loss, as fans ogle the booty for free instead of purchasing the album. The Boss has enlisted a squadron of buttock investigators to identify his own personal posterior amongst what experts say must be "as many as 30" other backsides pictured on the internet. No bloggers were available for a rebuttal.

Chicago rappers Cool Kids have demanded all pictures of cool kids be removed from all websites, despite the fact that the members of the band themselves are not kids, and only cool in a kind of ironic sense. "We saw some pictures of like a couple actual cool kids on the news, and we had the feeling maybe the news guys were making fun of us, since that's the name of our band," said Cool Kid Mikey Rocks, wearing a fluorescent pink baseball cap. When asked if they were trying to be funny or ironic or artsy with their request, he replied, "I don't even know any more," while making air quotes with his fingers.

In a related story, obscure 80s combo The The have demanded all instances of the article which they doubled to form the name of their band be excised from the internet, starting at the end of the sentence you are reading on the Riff right now. "There's tons of other determiners around for people to use that don't interfere with our clients' ability to control their own image," said a spokesperson, "like 'a,' or even 'an,' and in many circumstances, 'da.'" Da spokesperson then ran out of da room, so nobody could take his picture.

Protests Continue Against "Demeaning" Hip-Hop Videos

We've covered protests over hip-hop lyrics from a couple perspectives here on the Riff (now that's fair and balanced!) and the controversy continues: today the New York Times is reporting protestors are targeting media companies like Viacom (owner of MTV and BET) for "degrading" music videos. The protesters have been targeting the homes of company executives, but their goals seem a little vague:

Among other things the protesters want media companies like Viacom to develop “universal creative standards” for video and music, including prohibitions on some language and images. Video vixens and foul-mouthed pimps and thugs are now so widespread, the protesters maintain, that they infect perceptions of ordinary nonwhite people. … “A lot of rap isn’t rap anymore, it’s just people selling their souls,” Marc Newman, a 28-year-old car salesman from New Rochelle, N.Y., said on Saturday. He was among about 20 men, women and children from area Baptist churches marching outside the Upper East Side residence of Philippe Dauman, the president and chief executive of Viacom Inc.

While 20 people isn't that impressive, and Enough is Enough shares their name with another group focused on protecting our children from "hard-core sexually-explicit materials that is harmful to our youth" (uh, sic?), the Times reminds us that both the N.A.A.C.P. and the National Congress of Black Women are on the side of "more corporate responsibility" when it comes to music videos. The sentiments have perhaps been explained more clearly by the blog BrilliantBrown.com, in reaction to the BET show "Hot Ghetto Mess": "At this point, I’m beginning to wonder if BET has been secretly purchased by the KKK or something." Jeez, the KKK or the Taliban, do I have to pick a side?

Heavy Rotation: Calvin Harris – I Created Disco

With my rep around here as a glowstick-waving techno-bunny, I try to restrict my postings about dance music (really!), so the Riff doesn't turn into, you know, XLR8R's Dubstep Blog. But every once in a while an electronic full-length comes along that sticks in my head and seems like a candidate for mass crossover success, and right now that CD is the fantastic debut from Calvin Harris.

Another Scottish wunderkind, his clearest antecedent in the realm of solo Scot electro producers is, of course, the brilliant Mylo, and their styles do have some similarities, especially a kind of cheeky take on a certain decade between the '70s and the '90s. But while Mylo often seems to veer off into hypnotic, dreamy chill-out sounds (and doesn't sing), Harris is all about getting down and dirty on the dance floor, and strutting his stuff with winking, goofy vocals. Check out "Vegas," in which he insists, in a kind of Zen koan of partying, "I've got my car, and my ride, and my wheels… I've got my drugs, and my stuff, and my pills":

Just when it seems like the funky bassline is all we get, an unexpected chord pattern swoops in over the top, giving the track a strange edge of uncertainty.

Friday? Aye, It's Music News Day

Wait, you're telling me that after the whole build-up and lottery rigamarole, the Led Zeppelin reunion show scheduled for November 26th in London is being postponed because Jimmy Page hurt his widdle finger? Oh, but you're also telling me it was actaully a fracture, and the show's already been rescheduled for December 10th? Okay then.

Meat Loaf halted a gig in Newcastle, UK last night after only a few songs, announcing not only the end of the show but of his musical career. "I can no longer continue," he said, "this is the last show I may ever do in my life." Audience members reported the singer had seemed "drunk" and was slurring his words during the concert; Meat Loaf apparently tours with an oxygen tank by the side of the stage due to health concerns.

Rapper Da Brat was arrested in Atlanta last night after allegedly hitting a waitress in the face with a rum bottle. Ouch. She posted $50,000 bail and was released. Da Brat was the first female rapper to go platinum. More importantly, what's that horrible yellow polka-dot jacket she's wearing? Is that a promotional shawl for Bee Movie?

Do you like music, except for all those musical parts? Well get your rhythmic butt to the 19th Annual Drum-Off Grand Finals in Hollywood January 5th, where drummers from Bad Religion, The Roots, No Doubt and Pennywise will, you know, drum. The event brings percussionists from around the country together to compete for a $10,000 prize and the ignorance of fans everywhere.

I Hate Sigur Rós

A while back I posted a link to preview a lovely-looking documentary on Icelandic combo Sigur Rós. The stunning, hi-def shots of the band's homeland and the unusual locations for the live performances were intriguing, despite the fact that their music has always bugged me. So it was with some interest that I awaited the band's new double album, Hvarf/Heim, which comes out next Tuesday. Would it signal a musical evolution, finally allowing me to join my hipster friends in Sigur Rós adoration?

Nope. To be fair, the album isn't entirely new, and is more like a double EP: part 1, Hvarf, consists of "lost" songs from earlier in their career (like, what did they do with them?), and Heim is an acoustic set of older songs. But listen to "Staralfur," from the second EP, on their MySpace. The two-chord structure is just lazy, and the piano trills are so sappy they belong on a Hallmark Movie of the Week soundtrack. Lead singer Jónsi Birgisson sounds like an elf with a nasal infection, and when the track erupts into a supposedly climactic all-strings coda, you get every sad cliché from when a pop band writes for violins: naive, faux-tearjerky melodies, floating around the base of the chord. It sounds like the music from those "The More You Know" PSAs. Hvarf? Blarf!

Now, the accompanying film, Heima, shows that perhaps the Rós are best heard as an inoffensive soundtrack for affecting visuals. But if I ever have state secrets you want to get out of me, skip the waterboarding and go right for Hvarf/Heim at full volume. I'll tell you anything you want to know.

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I Hate Sigur Rós

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